Book Review: ‘The Queen of Bloody Everything’

As Edie Jones lies in a bed on the fourteenth floor of a Cambridge hospital, her adult daughter Dido tells their story, starting with the day that changed everything.

That was the day when Dido – aged six years and twenty-seven days old – met the handsome Tom Trevelyan, his precocious sister, Harry, and their parents, Angela and David.

The day Dido fell in love with a family completely different from her own. Because the Trevelyans were exactly the kind of family Dido dreamed of.

Normal.

And Dido’s mother, Edie, doesn’t do normal. In fact, as Dido has learnt the hard way, normal is the one thing Edie can never be . . .

My thoughts:

4 stars out of 5

‘The Queen of Bloody Everything’ is a riot to read. It’s the story of Dido and her teenage years with her unpredictable, wild mother. Growing up the chaotic household with her mum, Dido is enamoured with her middle-class, blessed neighbours: a family of four whose impeccable life is enviable and calm in equal measure, a direct contrast to Dido’s own. She quickly becomes best friends with their daughter and falls wildly in love with their son, and the novel follows Dido through childhood and her awkward teens and into the false starts and disasters of adulthood.

Dido is a likeable character and her escapades are thoroughly believable – it’s like reading a teenage diary in some scenes.

The novel was a little slow to start, but ultimately charming and very relate-able to anyone who’s been a teenager.